david.hill64

I expect the hardware costs of a CDL installation will be quite small. Preparing the paperwork, getting the approvals and staff training will add a lot. 

If you don't want to do something, inflating the costs is a good way of stopping it.

11 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Nearly every train was slam door, bar some commuter EmUs

none had any form of door lock.

none had any stewards.

How many have fallen to their deaths in the last 5 years to 2019 which is much more relevent ?

 

Old numbers mean nothing unless your proposing to go back to those standards.

why not dig up numbers from. 1829 when trains had no roof and no door latch either?

 

remember a judge has to be neutral.

 

 

Modern safety management has moved on from reacting to past events and putting in place standards, rules and regulations to stop them happening again to a proactive risk based approach. We now brainstorm things that could go wrong - and past experience is still vital - and try to assess the probability and consequence of the hazard materialising. 

Even if there were no accidents associated with slam door stock in the 5 years up to 2019, that doesn't preclude the possibility of one or more fatalities this year.

I agree that the probability is low, but it isn't zero. There will also be an increasing number of passengers who have never experienced the joys of leaning out of a window to use the door handle. Lack of familiarity with the set up is likely to lead to error. Perhaps the probability increases as years pass?

Having identified the hazard, its associated risk (= probability * consequence) needs to be managed. If it cannot be eliminated then it needs to be As Low As Reasonably Practicable. WCRC has a duty to demonstrate this. If they cannot then they will be in breach of their legal obligations. If WCRC proposes something other than CDL then they will have to demonstrate that the alternative is a more effective risk reduction measure. That is how the judge will decide.

17 hours ago, 11B said:

https://westcoastrailways.co.uk/news/jacobite-letter-from-mps-re-wcr

 

Just found this on WCR web site

 

So still no exemption, but now getting MPs to try and get one 🤦🏻

 

Ian

I wonder if they told the MP's about their appalling disregard for safety in other areas?

It's all well and good saying that they have not had a serious injury attributable to the lack of CDL. Ernie hasn't given me the £1m prize for my premium bond holding yet, but that's not to say that he won't next month.

They talk about it being a 'temporary exemption' but admit they have made no submission to fit CDL. How long is temporary? Till the stock rots?

If WCR doesn't understand its legal obligation to manage risk in line with UK law then they ought not to be allowed to operate anywhere. 

1 hour ago, johnofwessex said:

 

Fascinating figures.

 

Interesting to see how much safer the UK is compared with Western Europe never mind anywhere else.

Particularly for workforce safety. I have long suspected that there is a direct link between the high costs of maintenance for UK rail and our reluctance to kill or maim our staff.

2 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

 

CDL is something of a red herring in the Great Central accident, and if the coaches had CDL, there is every chance that the guard would have unlocked the doors anyway. Selective door opening, which is a different discussion entirely, would probably not have been used even if it were available, because the train was expected to stop in the platform, not partially beyond the platform end.

 

RSR99 specifically excludes railways whose operating speed is 25 mph or less, and it seems that ORR and RAIB currently have no interest in extending CDL to these railways. Perhaps they will do so in future, but at the moment I see no signs of it. CDL is not even hinted at as a recommendation in the Great Central accident report.

I agree: my point was that the ORR will have door issues and their management on heritage lines under review because of incidents like that at the GCR.

Just now, adb968008 said:

I dont disagree, but why then are preserved railways not being asked to implement cdl… as they go at 25mph ?

There are indications that the ORR is concerned about the exemptions that apply to Heritage Railways, so we may well find further tightening of many issues.

There was an incident recently on the Great Central Railway where a passenger fell from a door in a situation where on a modern railway Selective Door Opening would have prevented the occurrence. It is likely that door issues will be exercising the minds of ORR staff.

1 hour ago, DY444 said:

 

I am a vehement critic of the ORR because I believe it has done far more harm to the wellbeing of the railways than good.  It has systematically redefined the "Reasonable" from ALARP to something no dictionary would recognise.  I would have much greater sympathy with it in this case if it didn't have such an atrocious record of imposing enormous cost for negligible, and in some cases zero, safety benefit. 

 

An interesting statement. Where do you believe the ORR has an atrocious record of imposing enormous cost for negligible benefit? Such an action goes against the entire basis of UK safety law where there is an obligation to eliminate risks or at least reduce them to a level that is negligible (clear that the residual risk is at a level that is acceptable - think SIL4 systems) or at worst tolerable (in which case they must be subject to regular management review). RSSB gives a VPF figure of £2.4m. If the ORR were imposing stricter requirements, I think it likely that the industry would have challenged the view in the courts, as West Coast have done.

I post this with genuine interest. I have been writing and/or assessing safety cases for railways for many years now, but not for UK applications, so may well have missed some unreasonable ORR impositions.

I wrote earlier about the joys for a Gloucester lad of seeing the Scots specials - what were later to be class 06 and 17 plus the different DMU's - but if I think about it there were earlier delights.

A trip to Bristol in 1966 showed me warships for the first time, including the original D600 series, and Falcon. Although Gloucester regularly saw Westerns on the London trains and Hymeks on a variety of things, Warships at that time were rare. The regular diesel classes were only Brush type 4 (47) and Peaks (45 and 46) with an occasional 25, 27 and 37.

That same year a trip to Birmingham brought me my first Brush type 2 (31) on a Norwich to Birmingham service and my first EEtype 1 (20) outside Bescot yard and my first EEtype 4 (40) on the Euston trains.

Later that year a trip to Derby works yielded all sorts of goodies: the original main line diesels (10000/1 and 10201/2/3) on the scrap line plus a variety of small shunters in the D29xx series and strange shunters that were a bit like the standard 08 but with jackshadt drives! Real wonders.

Coming from Gloucester, trips to Scotland in the 70's were very interesting: strange 0-4-0 shunters, claytons, white circle DMUs. All strange beasts.

On 19/02/2024 at 11:14, 30368 said:

I am much more exercised by the news that the three ROSCOs made £400m profit, or a profit rate of 41%, in 2022/3. Compared to the Train Operating Companies, the ROSCOs have very little risk, either safety or financial, given that the Taxpayer underwrites the TOCs. Now that is a railway news piece that is worth looking at...

 

Not sure what relevance this has to renaming, but perhaps worth noting that trains supplied via ROSCO leasing contracts are still cheaper than those procured directly by DfT.

I suspect that those institutions that have invested in new stock which is now off lease might take issue with your assertion that there is little financial risk.

According to research by New York University, Financial Institutions (other than banking) have an average profit rate of 65%. Interesting to compare this with returns from green and renewable energy, which are a mere 61%.

9 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

The only bit that isn't labelled is the infill in the six-foot and the cess. Is that ballast and, if so, why?

Wild guess: noise attenuation. That hollow box is going to be a nice sounding board. Ballast would not impede drainage and muffle sounds.

Aerodynamic effects cause pantograph uplift forces to increase with speed. The continentals accepted this but BR - who had the best vehicle dynamics experts in Europe - working with Brecknell Willis came up with a pantograph design that didn't behave in the same way. You may have noticed the aerofoils on the design. The whole ECML electrification system was modelled from the ballast up to the overhead system using the class 91 and overhead line characteristics to optimize system performance. We know that it worked at up to 155mph and with appropriate maintenance would have been OK for regular 140mph running, which is what it was designed for.

The whole lot had to be deigned to a price. BR was excellent at doing that. I remember in 1992 when I was working on the Taiwan High Speed Rail system a GEC-Alsthom engineer complaining about how cheap the 91's were and warning the team that they couldn't use UK prices to benchmark procurement.

It is certainly true that the headspan design suffers from a 'one down, all down' problem but it was probably the only way to get the project delivered within budget. 

1 hour ago, St Enodoc said:

The terms "acceptable" and "tolerable" are no longer in the risk management dictionary.

1 hour ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Correct and for a very good reason!

 

No risk should EVER be seen as 'acceptable' by anyone - risks will, if allowed to become 'events', cause harm.

 

It therefore follows that responsible risk management is to continually seek to reduce them as much as technology and finance allows and not sit back claiming risks are 'acceptable'

Very strange. Most - probably all - of the Safety Plans that I have reviewed in recent years use the standard ALARP triangle. The peak region contains risks that are identified as intolerable and must be eliminated/mitigated. The base of the triangle contains those risks that are deemed acceptable without further review (and there are a lot of these) while the majority of risks fall into the tolerable region. Those risks in the tolerable region are subject to continuing reviews to ensure that the risk is As Low As Reasonably Practicable. (Some Safety Plans also allow for unacceptable risks. These are risks that are usually time bound and where elimination measures are not reasonable practicable. They are permitted if management accepts them. Happens sometimes during system migration).

Risk is probability times consequence. An example of an acceptable risk: there is a possibility that a jumbo jet could crash onto a station building causing multiple casualties. This is an example of a high consequence but extremely low frequency event where the costs of mitigation (eg rebuilding the station underground) are grossly disproportionate to the benefit. Management would not be criticised for not having this under review. There will be many other risks that are deemed to be acceptable. Risks associated with signalling equipment assessed to be SIL4 are likely to be considered to be acceptable even though SIL4 does not guarantee absolute safety, for the very simple reason that absolute safety does not exist.

8 hours ago, roythebus1 said:

But with the figure of 350-odd deaths a year from people falling out of trains, that's nearly one a day!!

 

 

I think that the 350 figure was the total deaths attributed to falling from a train in the time that BR had been in existence. So less than 10 a year. As far as I know it excluded deaths and injuries at stations caused by people being hit by opening doors or injuring whilst alighting before the train had stopped. However, there were indications that the problem was getting worse.

Fitting CDL on main line stock was a no brainer - it clearly fell within the realms of reasonable practicality.

On 28/12/2023 at 13:40, KeithMacdonald said:

 

But what are the current standards? And whose job is it to enforce them? And if not why not?

Equipment always conforms to the standards in force at the time of design. Occasionally standards may change during the design process, in which case it is usual to allow the standards existing at the time of contract signature to prevail. Conformance with standards is checked by the relevant assessment body (NOBO, DEBO). The relevant body depends whether the applicable standards are TSI's and associated EN norms, or National Notified Technical Rules (where TSI's are not applicable). 

Sometimes where a new standard results in significant additional work to demonstrate compliance there may be a period of grace to allow compliance. An example is EN50128 where the 2011 revision caused significant problems for the signalling system manufacturers. Compliance to the 2001 version was allowed for many years after.

Occasionally a new regulation may be introduced which applies retrospectively. Central Door Locking on slam door stock is a good example. This only happens when it is assessed that continuing use of the existing equipment presents a significant safety risk that can be mitigated by measures which are assessed as reasonably practicable (ie the cost of implementation is not disproportionate to the benefit). Otherwise there is no requirement for equipment to be upgraded as new standards are introduced. If there were, you would for example have to resignal the entire system to use ETCS*

HSTs do not comply with current crashworthiness standards, but as demonstrated by most incidents have reasonably good protection. The driver of the HST which hit the tree was reported as being unharmed. The 60 year old design stood up well.

*Assuming that the UK hasn't yet repealed this part of the EU legislation that requires all new works and resignalling to be done using this system. 

On 27/12/2023 at 16:29, rogerzilla said:

The irony is that an A4 could almost certainly have gone faster than Mallard by the 1950s, when Kenneth Cook had sorted the middle big end problem and all of them had Kylchap front ends.  There was a gentlemens' agreement not to take the record away from Mallard, apparently.  The story goes that Alan Pegler told the driver of SNG to back off in 1959 when it got to 112mph and was still accelerating easily.

I remember reading about drivers' recollections of A4's in reports of the 'Great Gathering' at York.  More than one claimed that they had achieved 130mph+. Nothing verified of course.

In the great scheme of things it is not particularly important whether Mallard's record could be broken. Somebody could design and build a steam loco that could achieve faster speeds, but what's the point? The British, German and American locos were of their age and that age has passed. Nobody is going to be designing new build steam for commercial use.

3 hours ago, Neil said:

 

Apologies, I must have missed it on my first read through. The figure is now £2,017,000.

You need to remember that this is for events that affect individuals. For multiple fatality events a different figure applies. (Sorry, no idea what it is currently). Countries that don't use ALARP use different criteria for single and multiple fatality events.

Just to add to Northmoor's excellent comment on Platform Edge Doors. I was involved with the changes required to the signalling system on Bangkok Skytrain that were necessary when PEDs were installed. The installation works require changes to the high integrity (SIL4) software. These changes have to be independently assessed. It doesn't come cheap. The added checks also take processing time. We lost up to 2 seconds at each station stop while the additional processing takes place. Over the whole route this adds up. On a metro it can become critical.

On BTS the main driver for the installation was the additional revenue from the electronic advertising.

On Hong Kong MTR the main driver for the installation of full height Passenger Screen Doors was the energy saving made by not having the station air conditioning systems try to cool the tunnels.

It is probably impossible to make a business case to retrofit PED/PSD on safety grounds alone, but as part of new build will be much easier to justify.

My early career was with British Rail Research. In the more junior grades promotion was linked with technical knowledge: up to a certain level (equivalent to BR management grades 3 or 4) the higher the grade, the better you knew your subject. When I became a section leader I was in charge of people who knew a lot more about their specialist subjects than I could ever hope to know. I remember being asked by my manager about how I was coping with managing the team. I pointed out that it was the first time I had ever been in the position of having less knowledge than the people I managed. It was clear to me from then on that the best way to manage was to know who you could rely on and then rely on them. Know too those who might have their own agenda and work with those as best you can. Try to pick up the basics of each subject within the team and know what you can answer and what needs support. I am sure that the best managers that I worked for operated that way. You don't need to be a technical expert in rail to manage rail, but you do need to have sufficient engineering/operations knowledge to be able to interact to get the best from your team.

I think that the rail industry, like every other, follows diversity principles which often seem to ensure that the correct boxes are ticked rather than appoint on merit alone. 

7 hours ago, MarkC said:

This was the big concern when the centralized signalling centers were first proposed - what happens if, for example, somebody accidentally puts a *JCB scoop through a cable run? I don't recall any proper answer to this ever being offered...

 

* other excavating machinery is available...

 

Mark

Not sure about the big railway as my recent experience is with metros and Taiwan HSR. These have diverse redundant comms routes with the option for local control if, for example, the route is completely severed in the middle.

I was in the cab of an HST leaving Reading towards the west when our green signal momentarily went to red before returning to the green. The drivers blamed the 37 in the triangle causing loss of detection on a set of points. They weren't at all fazed by it.  However, for me, seeing a loco on an apparent conflicting route cause the events was an exercise in sphincter control.

As Simon says, lots of things can cause a signal to revert to red. Getting a transient wrong side failure would be a different animal.

TI21 track circuits are supposedly traction immune, hence the name. They are still being installed today.

The study talks about track circuits on AC electrified lines, which might mean they are simple DC type.

Having written and/or approved signalling system safety cases, including for systems using TI21 track circuits, I find it very difficult to believe that wrong side failures would be more common than right side failures. 

I would also point out that the study predicts wrong side failures every 10-20 years. Given the length of time that DC and TI21 track circuits have been in use, you might have expected there to have been a few wrong side failures by now.

It reminds me of the early days of safety cases, when we had an argument that the winter sun shining through a fence would cause shadows on the conductor rail resulting in partial melting of the ice on the conductor rail which would induce cyclic arcing of the collector shoes which would be at a frequency that would cause the AC track circuits to malfunction.

I have a feeling that if the solar storm were large enough to cause this sort of issue, we might all have been fried anyway.

19 minutes ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

A Gateshead loco in typical work-a-day condition...

I thought it was too clean for one of theirs...............

TPWS was nearly Enhanced Automatic Warning System until someone pointed out that we might be accused of making an ass of ourselves.

1 hour ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

I don't pretend to know the properties of manganese steel or how it work hardens, but it might be worth pointing out that in general terms, harder also means more brittle.

True, but not in this case. The material is ductile and tough. It can support a heavily cracked structure before collapse. 

When I started work at BR Research - many eons ago it seems - my first project was trying to understand rolling contact fatigue. I tested a variety of different rail steels. The manganese steel was significantly different in its response to the tests. When you examined the structure after failure there was always a vast network of cracking before collapse. Completely different to the standard high carbon rail steels which gave way not long after the first crack propagated.